On the opposite corner, a Starbucks packed with the young and the fashionable bore a sign that proclaimed NOW OPEN 24 HOURS. The sidewalk was covered with scaffolding that wrapped around the corner, protecting pedestrians from falling debris as the building next door to the Starbucks was renovated.
Farther west on Belmont were an independent video store, a used bookstore, a Japanese goods emporium, several fashionable boutiques and a Middle Eastern take-out place called Sinbad’s that had the best falafel and hummus in the city, as far as I was concerned. East and closer to the lakefront was Boys Town on Halsted, with its strip of nightclubs and open-late eateries.
The proximity of this intersection to such a variety of businesses, restaurants and people, as well as the convenience of three bus lines and a major El stop, meant that Clark and Belmont never slept. Even at ten forty-five on a weeknight, there was still a snarl of traffic, buses trying to negotiate in and out of bus stops while car drivers cursed through their windows, cabbies zooming to pick up and drop off fares without any regard for pedestrians, cyclists or inanimate objects. People stepped off the sidewalk willy-nilly and crossed portions of the four-way intersection, not bothering to wait for the crossing signal.
Gabriel and I leaned against a storefront on the northeast corner and watched the crowd of neo-Goth and emo kids lurking in the small parking lot of the Dunkin’ Donuts, sharing cigarettes and coffee cups. Students and young professionals intent on their laptops could be seen through the window of the Starbucks.
“How will you know which is the man you are looking for?” Gabriel said, his eyes roaming the crowds of people. He was definitely taking his bodyguard duties seriously tonight. He gave off a take-one-step-closer-and-I-will-show-you-Armageddon vibe that had people veering around us on the sidewalks. I don’t think he was aware of what he did.
“Whenever I have to pick up a soul, I just know it’s them,” I said simply.
“There is nothing to signal you?” Gabriel asked.
“If you mean a rotating blue light and siren, or maybe a flashing arrow announcing, FRESH SOUL RIGHT HERE, then no,” I said, amused. “There is a kind of signal, I guess. It’s more like a knowing, like I sense that they are in my presence and then my whole being just kind of locks on them. I never really thought about it before. It’s always been instinctive.”
We fell silent for a few moments. Gabriel scanned the crowd for threats—although I could have told him that if Ramuell showed up, we would definitely notice—and I scanned the crowd for James Takahashi. My mind wandered a little as we waited, and then a thought occurred to me.
“Gabriel,” I said.
“Hmm?”
“When you say that you are consulting with my father, how is it you do that? Do you have some kind of special way of communicating with him?”
Gabriel frowned and looked at me. “What do you mean?”
“Well, how do you get in touch with him? Are you performing some kind of spell?”
He looked very amused as he pulled something out of his pocket and held it up to me. A tiny little silver cell phone.
“Uh, okay,” I said, a little embarrassed. “I guess your cell plan really has great network coverage if you can get a cell signal in the pit.”
“Lord Azazel lives in Minnesota,” Gabriel said absently, and returned to his bodyguarding.
“Minnesota?” I asked. My father lived less than seven hours away from me? “How can that be?”
“He lives in Minneapolis,” Gabriel clarified, and looked at me. I must have looked as stunned and confused as I felt. “Lucifer’s kingdom is metaphorical, not literal. The fallen are scattered throughout the world, maintaining different bases of power for him.”
“And my father lives in Minneapolis,” I repeated.
“Yes.”
“And where does Lucifer live?”
“Los Angeles.”
I let out a laugh at that. “Of course he does.”
Just then I felt a little twinge in my consciousness and I turned away from Gabriel, my attention absorbed by the mass of people moving back and forth in front of me.
“What is it?” Gabriel asked, sensing the change in me.
“He’s here,” I said, and a second later I found him.
He looked about seventeen or eighteen, with dark, almond-shaped eyes and dyed white-blond hair that was cut short all over his head except for two long hanks in the front that brushed the tops of his cheekbones. He was tall and his scarecrow limbs were clad in what I thought of as mall punk—red plaid pants covered in zippers, baggy black T-shirt, surplus combat boots. There was a messenger bag imprinted with a skull and crossbones slung over his shoulder and he read from an obviously well-used copy of Dostoevsky’s The Idiot as he walked. A half-burnt cigarette dangled from his bottom lip.
I could see what was going to happen. Takahashi walked and read, heading south on Clark only a few steps from the intersection. On the west side of Belmont, a few feet from where Gabriel and I stood, a cabbie dropped off a fare and prepared to pull through the intersection just as the light flashed yellow for a second or two before changing to red.
The cabbie, being from Chicago, was not about to let a little thing like a red light impede his forward motion. Takahashi glanced up from his book long enough to verify that the crossing signal showed WALK, and then went back to reading as he stepped into the street. I felt the wings pushing out of my back. If anyone had looked at me at that moment, they would have seen me wink out of sight, almost as if I had never been there.